Dear all,
The university of Sussex is holding a day-conference on 12th May 2000,
entitled:
MASS-OBSERVATION AS POETRY AND SCIENCE:
CHARLES MADGE AND HIS CONTEXTS
Mass-Observation was a social research organisation set up in 1937 with
the aim of completing an anthropology of ourselves. This entailed
getting volunteers to report on all the details of the 12th day of each
month including overheard conversations - they also actively
investigated pubs, churches, dancehalls etc. secretly recording what was
going on. The idea was to feed back this material to the people
themselves and so give a different understanding of themselves to them,
as opposed to that represented in the mass media.
However, during the war, M-O worked for the home intelligence department
of the Ministry of Information supplying daily morale reports during the
crucial summer of 1940. This information was used to direct Government
policy and propaganda.
This conference concentrates on co-founder Charles Madge - communist,
poet and 'Daily Mirror' reporter who became the first professor of
sociology at the university of Birmingham after the war. It will shed
light on a number of topics such as how 1930s radicalism became part of
the post war establishment; and the complicity of social research with
state surveillance.
Please find more details attached including the conference letter,
conference provisional program and registration form.
Please feel free to e-mail me with queries, points of interest etc. even
if you don't want to come to the conference.
Cheers, Nick
Nick Hubble,
[log in to unmask]
GRC Humanities, Arts B, University of Sussex
01273 606755 x2139
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